TARGET: WAL-MART

Death row at a federal penitentiary is an appropriately grim place
under any circumstances. It seemed particularly so on a cold February
morning as I trudged through the snow on my way to keep an appointment
with a killer.

I am always struck by the absence of color at prisons. The real world
washed away to reveal a muted institutional neutral. In fact, the only
bright and cheery object was the row upon row of towering razor wire.
Even on this overcast morning, its giant teeth glittered.

I had reviewed the file of course, spending hours going through the
details concerning the abduction of the wife and mother from the Wal-Mart
parking lot in broad daylight and of her subsequent rape and murder.
I had read the investigative files, the court transcripts. I had been
struck by the arrest photo of the killer. He sneered into the camera,
defiant and empty. A portrait of malevolence. How terrible, I thought,
that the last images an innocent woman would have on this earth would
be of this monster.

It was perhaps a mercy of sorts that the body had never been recovered.
While it denied a sense of closure, I have seen far too often the terrible
pain and deep scars left on families and loved ones exposed to autopsy
photos and endless clinical details of a wrongful death.

I didn't recognize him at first. He sat in a wheelchair (from a self
inflicted wound carefully designed not to cause too much damage) his
blond hair once cropped in a military brush cut had grown out and was
styled in a grotesque page boy style. His watery blue eyes glowed with
self pity.

The appeals filed on his behalf were typical. He had a bad childhood,
he came from difficult circumstances, he abused alcohol and drugs, and
he wasn't responsible. A young legal intern that had worked on one of
the obligatory appeals wrote of the convicted killer:

"He sickened me. I mean, here I was trying to keep this
guy from being executed, and I found him disgusting. He was a drama
queen and a manipulator who thought he was smarter than everyone.
He wasn't."

I wasn't surprised when the first thing out of his mouth in my interview
with him was an offer to "lead us to the body." The terrain
where he confessed to leaving the corpse of the woman he killed had
been searched and re-searched by teams of trained professionals. Corpse
sniffing dogs and crews on the ground, helicopters from the air, and
dive teams in the surrounding water.

The search lasted months.

Almost three years had passed since an innocent woman was senselessly
murdered and the creature who was responsible sat in front of me thinking
he would get a field trip.

I explained I wasn't there for that.

I wasn't a lawyer, a cop, a psychologist, or a reporter.
I didn't care about his life story, his angst, or his "new found
Christianity".
I wanted something more specific.
I wanted to know why this predator chose Wal-Mart as his hunting ground.
I was soon to discover that it wasn't by chance or accident, but by
design.
He spoke at length, softly and mostly avoiding my eyes.

Over a short period of time he had become a prolific "opportunistic
offender" i.e. like most criminals he sought targets that offered
a quick and easy take with little risk to him.

"I'd been breaking into cars and stuff since I was about
twelve. You just go there (Wal-Mart) and if you park, you can just
watch people pull up. Like some people, they will put stuff in the
trunk. And if you sit there and watch the people, you know which ones
put stuff in their trunk or got stuff in their cars."

Over a period of a decade, he had frequented Wal-Mart parking lots,
stealing purses and packages, developing cons and scams to get cash
for "returns" on stolen items, negotiating bad checks and
more. His luck ran out in a Wal-Mart parking lot one afternoon when
his wife, tired of being physically and emotionally battered and terrified
at the rant he was on in their car, called the police from inside the
store and reported him. The police arrested him and found a gun he had
been brandishing together with stolen items and forged checks.

In jail, it didn't take long for him to find a like minded creep. A
fellow thief who was easily manipulated and willingly led. He got word
that the police intended to file additional charges against him, and
two days later, together with his newfound partner, the two of them
escaped custody. In the four week, multi-state crime spree that followed,
there was a constant thread in all of their activities: Wal-Mart.

Not only did they find a safe haven and targets of opportunity in perpetrating
crime at Wal-Mart stores across the country, Wal-Mart even served as
a safe refuge for them to spend the night, sleeping undisturbed in their
car in the store parking lot.

"Like if I was driving and I was falling asleep, we would
pull over. It was sort of like I knew that was a place that we could
make money breaking into cars."

"In fact, you slept the night and the next morning broke
into a truck parked right next to you?"

"Yeah."

"So, Wal-Mart is a 24 hour opportunity?"

"Yeah. We didn't want to go nowhere where there was security."

Over a period of days and weeks, fueled by alcohol and methamphetamine,
and emboldened with their successes, the two predators collided with
their victim on a bright afternoon in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart.
Concerned that their car was known to the FBI and police searching for
them since their escape, they sought to steal a fast and reliable car.
It would not have surprised them to learn that 17 cars had been stolen
out of this lot in previous months. It wouldn't have concerned them
that the violent abduction of the victim was caught on grainy surveillance
footage.

Just as there was no form of security present or patrolling the lot
at these stores, neither was anyone ever assigned to watch the cameras
or review the footage. By the time anyone was able to determine that
a wife and mother had been seized in broad daylight and driven to her
death, days had passed.
After raping and murdering the woman, they continued an erratic cross-country
run.

Several days later a 15-year-old girl was confronted by a man holding
a gun as she entered her car. What he hadn't counted on was the girl's
mother, a few feet behind him. His target interrupted, the assailant
fled on foot while the quick thinking mother was able to call police
who gave chase and ultimately apprehend one of the two fugitives. And
where did this take place? A Wal-Mart parking lot.

For me, this sad story was in the words of the immortal Yogi Berra,
"Déjà vu all over again." Just the year before
I had been consulted on another case involving the abduction and brutal
rape of a young college girl from the parking lot of a Wal-Mart. Again,
no security was present and no one patrolled the parking lot. The young
woman displayed enormous courage in fighting back against her attacker,
screaming and struggling as she was seized from the Wal-Mart. She survived
the attack managing to flee bleeding and naked to a nearby home. Her
assailant is still at large. The Wal-Mart parking lot where the attack
took place had been the scene of two violent homicides only a short
time before.

So is the fact that Wal-Mart parking lots offer a disproportionate
opportunity for criminals come as a surprise to Wal-Mart?

"Three years ago management conducted a survey that looked
at crime statistics for a one year period on Wal-Mart properties.
The survey showed that 80% of crimes at Wal-Mart were occurring in
the parking lot.

To combat this outdoor crime a team of loss prevention members
tested a new parking lot security program in 1994 at several Florida
stores. The results have been outstanding. During the four months
of operating the patrol vehicles at that store (in Tampa Florida which
experienced 226 stolen cars from the parking lot previously) the reported
incidents dropped to zero. The patrol program costs Wal-Mart $45,000.00
dollars per year per store."

Yet the overwhelming majority of these facilities open 24 hours a day,
accommodating up to 2,000 parking spaces on an average, who's shopping
demographic are a majority of female customers still do not provide
security to their patrons where they know they are vulnerable.

After 35 years in the security industry, dealing with the aftermath
of over a hundred and fifty homicides and other brutal crimes, I am
often asked if I have difficulty sleeping, if the horrors and vivid
details of these heinous and brutal crimes haunt my dreams. Of course
they do.

I wouldn't give a damn for someone who could become numb to this senseless
carnage. Indifferent to the lives torn apart by vicious crimes, many
of which might have been prevented. My question is how does someone
sleep who makes a conscious decision to put innocent lives at stake
day in and day out?

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good
men do nothing"

-Edmund Burke, 18th century Irish Statesman

The corporate masters at Wal-Mart have made a decision when it comes
to the basic and reasonable safety and security of their employees and
patrons. The decision is to do nothing. Their choice of putting profit
over life is, in the words of Hannah Arendt, the very banality of evil.

J. R. Roberts is a security consultant in private practice with over
35 years of practical experience.

Mr.
Roberts served as Director of Risk Management for Valor Security, one
of the country's largest providers of security to the shopping center
industry. In addition to providing training and consultation to clients
across the United Sates, Mr. Roberts has served as an expert witness
in over 150 lawsuits concerning safety and security and for both defendant
and plaintiff. Mr. Roberts makes his home in Savannah, Georgia.